Jim Donaldson: NBA commissioner Silver is right on target

Tuesday

Apr 29, 2014 at 5:45 PM

A little more than two weeks before he was to receive a second lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Los Angeles Clippers...

A little more than two weeks before he was to receive a second lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling has been banned for life from the NBA by league commissioner Adam Silver for racist remarks.

Those remarks were made in a taped conversation between the 80-year-old Sterling and a 31-year-old woman who has been a frequent companion of his — a woman who also is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Sterling’s wife of more than 50 years, Rochelle.

How the tape of a presumably private conversation with Sterling’s presumed mistress came into the hands of the celebrity news website TMZ, which broke the story that led Tuesday afternoon to the lifetime ban of the league’s longest-tenured owner, has yet to be determined.

But it’s a safe bet that it wasn’t Sterling who sold it to them.

He certainly doesn’t need the money.

If forced to sell his team, as Silver and at least three-quarters of Sterling’s fellow NBA owners would like to see, his profit would be in the hundreds of millions.

Sterling bought the woefully — if not exactly surprisingly — unsuccessful Clippers for what now seems a paltry $12.5 million prior to the 1981-82 season. It has been estimated that he could sell the franchise for as much as $700 million, even though the Clippers have made only seven playoff appearances in his 33 years as owner, winning the pathetic total of just 19 postseason games going into last night’s game against the Golden State Warriors in L.A.

Given the abhorrently racist comments Sterling made in his taped conversation with his lady friend, V. — yeah, just “V” — Stiviano, Silver acted decisively, forcefully and correctly in meting out the stiffest punishment possible.

Stating that Sterling’s “hateful opinions” are “deeply offensive and harmful,” Silver said that “effective immediately” he was “banning Mr. Sterling for life” and fining him $2.5 million, the maximum allowed under the NBA constitution.

The league constitution also allows, Silver said, the NBA Board of Governors to force Sterling to sell the team, assuming the seemingly automatic approval of 75 percent of the owners — a process that Silver said would “begin immediately.”

“I will do everything in my power to assure that happens,” Silver said. “I fully expect to get the support of the other NBA owners to remove him. Mr. Sterling’s views simply have no place in the NBA.”

There simply is no other way to view the situation.

Which is not the same as saying that everything is simple about the way it has evolved.

Silver admitted he was “shocked” when he first heard Sterling’s voice on the TMZ tape and said he hoped “it was fraudulent, or had been doctored.”

It was neither.

“There’s nothing I’ve ever seen in his behavior,” Silver said, “that would indicate he held the views expressed in (the) recordings.”

Clearly, the L.A. chapter of the NAACP felt similarly, since it was prepared to present him next month with yet another lifetime achievement award, after already having given him one in 2009.

Which, interestingly, was the same year Sterling paid a $2.765-million settlement relating to allegations by the Justice Department that he had discriminated against African-Americans, Latinos and families with children at scores of apartment buildings he owned in and around Los Angeles.

Sterling reportedly has donated money for years to the L.A. chapter of the NAACP, although branch president Lee Jenkins told the newspaper USA Today that the amount was “insignificant, and we’re going to return it.”

What appears not to be insignificant is the amount of money Sterling allegedly has spent on Ms. Stiviano, who lives in a duplex in L.A. valued at $1.8 million.

A story in Monday’s L.A. Times said Stiviano “was sued last month by Sterling’s wife, Rochelle, who seeks the return of the duplex as well as a Ferrari, two Bentleys and a Range Rover she said her husband bought for Stiviano.

“Sterling also gave Stiviano $240,000 for living expenses, according to Rochelle Sterling’s lawsuit, amounting to $2 million of community property that he allegedly spent on Stiviano without his wife’s knowledge.

“In a response to the lawsuit, Stiviano argues that Rochelle Sterling must have known that her husband of more than 50 years had romantic relationships outside of his marriage.

“Stiviano’s court filing ridicules the notion that the ‘feminine wiles of Ms. Stiviano overpowered the iron will of Donald T. Sterling, who is well known as one of the most shrewd businessmen in the world.’ Stiviano’s papers, however, do not acknowledge that she was in a romantic relationship with Sterling.”

Stiviano’s lawyer, Mac Nehoray, told the Times that Stiviano did not release — nor, heaven forbid, sell — the tapes to TMZ.

According to TMZ, people “close to” Stiviano insist that Sterling knew his conversations with her were taped because she was acting as his “archivist.”

Since when, one has to wonders did “archivist” become a synonym for “mistress?”

Let that be yet another reason for wayward husbands to remain on the straight and narrow.

In such ways is this unseemly incident as much a comedy as it is a tragedy.

Because who, after all, would consider it tragic that a man like Sterling has been banned and will be forced to sell his team?

It wasn’t just a politically correct decision by Silver, it was an entirely correct decision.

It’s up to you whether you consider the hundreds of millions Sterling will reap from the sale to be tragic or comic.